It's been seven months since I dropped all my group classes due to health and business pressures. (Oops, did I forget to mention that? Last April I had to drop all my staff positions due to health and business concerns. I guess I'll do a post about that!)
The result is that I haven't seen a freestyle warm up in seven months. And I haven't seen a warm up at a rink that doesn't train its beginning freestyle students in the challenging warm up skills in even longer than that.
A couple of weeks ago I went to watch my student H, who passed into Freestyle One this session. His mother was a little concerned, because both I and his class teacher had told her he'd be fine with the skills, it was the warm up that she should be worried about.
He, and the other baby freestylers actually do fine. They stumble through the skills, sometimes badly and fast, sometimes well, but slow, but pretty much clueless throughout.
The Ice Rink of the Damned actually got this one right-- they inserted a level between Delta and FS1 called "Pre Freestyle" with the express mandate of teaching the kids the warm up patterns. At my last rink, you didn't get out of Delta (or out of Beta for that matter) without the flow, speed and skating knowledge to handle the warm up. (Yes, all those kids skated better than me. It was a little intimidating. Fortunately I'm extremely arrogant.)
H's rink-- man, they just throw them in the deep end, or would have, if it wasn't frozen. Because those kids were drowning.
I don't think the kids knew this, and the coaches were handling it reasonably well, but I don't really understand the point of having kids try to figure out a complex skill like power 3-turns. They're just getting it wrong and are going to have to unlearn it, or they'll feel incompetent and will check out. (haha skating joke).
Here are some solutions:
Pre-Freestyle
As I noted, you can simply add a level. The Basic Skills and ISI curricula are not governed by force of law. You can mess around with them. The problem moving from Learn to Skate into Freestyle is that LTS teaches the skills in isolation; Freestyle requires flow, and the ability to move from one skill to another. (This is actually one of the areas where Basic Skills gets it better than ISI, because it does teach more flow than ISI.)
The skills that kids should learn are alternating 3-turns, waltz 3-turns, power 3-turns, alternating mohawks, stopping drills, cross rolls and cross steps, perimeter stroking (PrePre pattern), perimeter cross overs (forwards and backwards), 3-turn tap toes. That'll do it. Once they have these in their muscle memory, other warm up patterns will become more intuitive.
Divide the ice
If your rink doesn't have enough available ice to add a level, and you've got mixed high/mid and low in a single class, put the new freestylers on one side of the blue line (about a quarter of the rink), with the rest of the class sharing the remainder. Yes, the high skaters will be somewhat restricted, but on the other hand they won't be tripping over the low skaters anymore. You don't even need to do it for the whole session-- maybe the first month, until the newbies learn the moves.
Add it to Delta
Delta Is So Boring. Start teaching the kids to put the skills together. They'll be more engaged and they'll be more ready for freestyle.
Rearrange the classes
Instead of putting Gamma and Delta on the same ice, put Gamma with the Betas, and create a Delta-FS1-FS2 level. this is another place where Basic Skills gets it right, by putting beginning spins and jumps in their learn to skate curriculum. FS1 and FS2 (and maybe FS3) shouldn't even be considered "Freestyle" but should still be counted in Learn to Skate, because they are still introducing basic concepts. But nobody asks me.
Divide the ice, part duo
To get around the full-ice problem created by dividing the ice along the short axis, put the high freestyle kids on the perimeter, and run the beginners up the center so they can both learn the skills and go at their own speed. You won't be able to run any "five circle" warm ups using this traffic pattern, but on the other hand you won't have the highs tripping over the lows. You'll also teach the high freestyle kids to use the whole ice. It makes me insane when skaters avoid the end zone like there's a force field blocking it.
How does your rink integrate or prepare low freestyle into the freestyle curriculum?
Showing posts with label warmup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label warmup. Show all posts
Dec 26, 2011
Why are they just skating around in circles?
"St Lidwina" recently overheard a conversation between a couple of moms and a coach, wherein the moms were complaining about the warm-up, in particular that the skaters "weren't learning anything."
While this was a freestyle class, if you're at a rink with learn-to-skate classes of 30 minutes you're not observing the phenomenon of the "free skate" at the beginning of class. But at longer classes, and in all free style classes, there will be a period of anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, where the skaters are "just" skating around in circles.
Why are they wasting your money?
Warm up
Coaches have not arranged for this just so they can wait for stragglers (we don't, as a rule), catch up on gossip (that's what Facebook is for), or stand around with our thumbs up our asses (too hard to reach). Warm up is an actual thing, and it is important to get you physiologically acclimated to the cold. In an ideal world even learn-to-skate kids would warm up off ice by jogging or doing calisthenics for 20 minutes, then spend 5 minutes getting their skates on, and would then step onto the ice ready work.
Excuse me, I'm back now.
I was laughing so hard I had to stop typing for a minute.
Now I have to say, that the leisurely gossip stroll that passes for class warm up (at least with the teens) is also not ideal, but it is having some salutory effect towards actually warming up one's core, which is what you want. And the little kids treat it like public session, so they're getting a really good benefit out of it.
Just skating
Regular readers of this blog know that I'm a big proponent of just skating. I love when learn-to-skate level kids go to public session and just skate, without having to worry about "practicing." You get a lot of benefit from just skating, plus, every now and then we need to leave those kids alone. Let's sport them 5 minutes where no adult is telling them what to do, or making them have "quality" time. How about throwing a little wasted time into these poor, over-scheduled kids' lives.
Five minutes of pointless skating is going to affect their ability to get into Yale, and,assuming $90 for a 10-week class, I think you can afford the prorated dollar that is the value of those 5 minutes. Skip your visit to Starbuck's one day every 3 months to make up for it.
Who needs help?
Warm up is also a time for coaches to watch and see whose skates are poorly tied, who needs gloves, or an extra jacket, whose mom needs to be told to please get out of the doorway. Has a coach forgotten her lesson book or the box of toys or stickers? This gives her a couple of minutes to go and get it. Is there a particular issue with some skater that mom needs to tell the coach about (leave early, getting over a cold, new glasses, here for a make-up, not going to be here next week, whatever). The mom gets to tell the coach now without cutting into lesson time.
Group warm up
A lot of rinks will do a brief group warm up as well. (Or not so brief. The Ice Rink of the Damned has freestyle warm ups that can go on for 40 minutes or more. No wonder no one can learn an axel in class.) This is an opportunity for skaters to push themselves. The lower level skaters will try to keep up with the skills and power of the high ones, and the high skaters will suddenly realize that those little shorties are getting good and they better deliver or they're going to look pretty silly. It also allows the coaches to introduce patterns and skills that aren't going to be taught in class. Also, notwithstanding that we're not waiting for the stragglers, it does give them an opportunity to sneak in.
Kids don't need to be "learning something" every waking second, and unless you're inside that skater's head, how the heck do you know whether they're learning something or not?
Instead of complaining about the wasted time, ask a coach what their warm-up philosophy is, or just ask your skater if she enjoys it. That's worth its weight in gold.
While this was a freestyle class, if you're at a rink with learn-to-skate classes of 30 minutes you're not observing the phenomenon of the "free skate" at the beginning of class. But at longer classes, and in all free style classes, there will be a period of anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, where the skaters are "just" skating around in circles.
Why are they wasting your money?
Warm up
Coaches have not arranged for this just so they can wait for stragglers (we don't, as a rule), catch up on gossip (that's what Facebook is for), or stand around with our thumbs up our asses (too hard to reach). Warm up is an actual thing, and it is important to get you physiologically acclimated to the cold. In an ideal world even learn-to-skate kids would warm up off ice by jogging or doing calisthenics for 20 minutes, then spend 5 minutes getting their skates on, and would then step onto the ice ready work.
Excuse me, I'm back now.
I was laughing so hard I had to stop typing for a minute.
Now I have to say, that the leisurely gossip stroll that passes for class warm up (at least with the teens) is also not ideal, but it is having some salutory effect towards actually warming up one's core, which is what you want. And the little kids treat it like public session, so they're getting a really good benefit out of it.
Just skating
Regular readers of this blog know that I'm a big proponent of just skating. I love when learn-to-skate level kids go to public session and just skate, without having to worry about "practicing." You get a lot of benefit from just skating, plus, every now and then we need to leave those kids alone. Let's sport them 5 minutes where no adult is telling them what to do, or making them have "quality" time. How about throwing a little wasted time into these poor, over-scheduled kids' lives.
Five minutes of pointless skating is going to affect their ability to get into Yale, and,assuming $90 for a 10-week class, I think you can afford the prorated dollar that is the value of those 5 minutes. Skip your visit to Starbuck's one day every 3 months to make up for it.
Who needs help?
Warm up is also a time for coaches to watch and see whose skates are poorly tied, who needs gloves, or an extra jacket, whose mom needs to be told to please get out of the doorway. Has a coach forgotten her lesson book or the box of toys or stickers? This gives her a couple of minutes to go and get it. Is there a particular issue with some skater that mom needs to tell the coach about (leave early, getting over a cold, new glasses, here for a make-up, not going to be here next week, whatever). The mom gets to tell the coach now without cutting into lesson time.
Group warm up
A lot of rinks will do a brief group warm up as well. (Or not so brief. The Ice Rink of the Damned has freestyle warm ups that can go on for 40 minutes or more. No wonder no one can learn an axel in class.) This is an opportunity for skaters to push themselves. The lower level skaters will try to keep up with the skills and power of the high ones, and the high skaters will suddenly realize that those little shorties are getting good and they better deliver or they're going to look pretty silly. It also allows the coaches to introduce patterns and skills that aren't going to be taught in class. Also, notwithstanding that we're not waiting for the stragglers, it does give them an opportunity to sneak in.
Kids don't need to be "learning something" every waking second, and unless you're inside that skater's head, how the heck do you know whether they're learning something or not?
Instead of complaining about the wasted time, ask a coach what their warm-up philosophy is, or just ask your skater if she enjoys it. That's worth its weight in gold.
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